Lightweight Linux is a blog about using Linux on old computers. Lightweight distributions and applications bring your old hardware back to life!

Burn CDs and DVDs with cdw

There are several useful applications available for burning CDs and DVDs on a Linux system. The geekiest users are probably happy with command line tools while most users are happy with k3b or gnomebaker.

Cdw is a ncurses based alternative to more famous tools. As a ncurses application it can be used on system with no X installed but as it has a menu based user interface it might be easier to use than the command line tools. In fact, cdw is just a frontend for cdrecord/wodim (for blanking CD-RW discs, writing data to single- or multi-session CD disc and single-session DVD discs) and mkisofs/genisoimage (for creating ISO images from selected files).

If you -- like me -- have difficulties in remembering the options of different CLI tools, you might like to try this small application. It is available at least in the repositories of Ubuntu and Debian testing (but not yet in the stable release).

If it is not included in your distribution's repositories, you can always get the source from the Sourceforge.

2 comments:

@redandwhiteThere is F4 hotkey for changing maximal size that is printed at the bottom of cdw window. You can select "DVD" size in dialog window.

This is not the same as automatic recognition of disc type, and cdw can't check how much space is left on your optical disc, but you can use this to see how large would be iso image created from selected files.